News and Events

February 24th to May 12th, 2008
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street • New York NY 10019
info@moma.org • www.moma.org

6th Floor, North Gallery
Organized by Paola Antonelli, Curator, and Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design.

Design and the Elastic Mind

In the past few decades, people have coped with dramatic changes in several long-standing relationships—for instance with the ideas of time, space, information, and individuality. We need to cope with abrupt changes in scale and our minds and bodies need to adapt and to acquire enough elasticity as to be able to synthesize such abundance. Designers have done what they do best by contributing thoughtful concepts that can provide guidance and ease as science and technology proceed in their evolution.

Designers have the ability to translate scientific research into everyday objects, comprehensible to all people. As such, they act as the conduit from the laboratory to the street and have the remarkable opportunity to manifest our visions and conceptions of the near future. This exhibition will not only focus on some outstanding existing examples of such permutations, but will also specifically celebrate the process from innovation, to idea, to product through a series of commissions.

“We should breed objects like we breed rabbits” — Lars Spuybroek
We can now ‘print’ an object directly from digital information – molds will just disappear. People have no idea yet what an incredible change in technology that is. And what that means for design. All design will become meta-design: objects can now be a range-of-objects like in a family or a species. Like zebra or oaks, or strawberries, or of course, people: not one is the same, but they are similar enough to be recognised.

We designed the object in such a way that the differences would be easily readable, without making them too different. They can be big on top, big in the middle, or big below. They can have many holes or just a few. But they will always be private, each lamp you buy is different from the other, it’s unique.